If there's a running tally somewhere of the
world's all-time best second-hand purchases,
add this one to the list: Not too long ago,
Damnations TX singer/bassist Amy Boone
walked into an Austin pawnshop and plunked
down around $70 for a second-hand Washburn
banjo.

"It was probably my rent money, but it was
cheap!" Boone says of the purchase, though it
was hardly money down the drain. That old
banjo would ultimately prove to be one of the
most defining elements of her fledgling band's
sound, second only to the sweet harmonies
Boone shares with her sister and co-band
leader Deborah Kelly. Boone's contribution
on banjo is limited to the initial purchase,
however; it's guitarist Rob Bernard's spirited
plucking that drives the Damnations live and
on their Sire debut, Half Mad Moon.

"I envisioned the banjo being in the band, but I
was still new on bass and had enough of a
challenge just to keep getting better at that,"
Boone says. "So, I invited Rob over, made him
some coffee to tantalize him, and asked,
'What do you think about playing banjo?' He
said, 'Uh, I'll give it a try.' So he sat in my
house and I strung out a bunch of folk songs
and he learned all the chords."

The prominence of banjo, mandolin and the
aforementioned sisterly harmonies betrays the
group's love of traditional bluegrass, country
and folk music, but there's more than enough
rock in the mix to lend the Damnations
pseudo-punk cred -- or at least to rub
traditionalists the wrong way. "There are so
many bluegrass and country purists that
would probably want to ring our neck," laughs
Boone. "We basically stick to rock venues
that can handle the crossover type of thing."

Half Mad Moon still begs to be filed under
alt-country, but it stands apart from the crowd
of lonesome Son Volt and Whiskeytown
imitators by virtue of its buoyant, infectious
energy. They're not above a haunting melody
or double-edged lyric, but by and large the
Damnations' spin on the No Depression
aesthetic actually steers clear of depression.
When the sisters sing of love's "hellish kind of
heaven" in the album's stand-out title track,
painting a grim scene of a rotting relationship
with the line, "It's been a long time let's have
ourselves a quarrel/Let's go sit upon our drunk
and lazy laurels," they do so over an insanely
sprightly Appalachian jig that demands a fervid
dance. It's a compelling approach that comes
off even better in their anything-but-lazy live
show, making the Damnations the best
Yankee-born Texas act since Jerry Jeff Walker
ditched his New York folkie schtick for
Austin's outlaw boho in the early Seventies.
Boone and Kelly, you see, were born in
Schoharie, N.Y., and didn't move to Austin
until some ten years ago.

"We saw a lot of bluegrass as kids growing up
in upstate New York," explains Boone, noting
that most of their Texas fans don't seem too
bothered by the Yankee thing. "It's not like we
came from Brooklyn and moved here or
anything. We grew up in a town ten times
smaller than this one. I guess people here
have accepted that we took the country
instead of the Yank part, and threw the Yank
part out."

Both sisters are now proud to call Austin
home, though their Lone Star allegiance has
nothing to do with the "TX" at the end of their
band name. That, alas, was a reluctant
concession to avoid confusion with all the
other damned bands flaunting the same name
or variations thereof. "We shouldn't have been
surprised to hear that there were other bands,
because it's actually a generic name," says
Kelly. "But once you get used to a name, it's
your identity. We tried to change it for a week
and it didn't work. It's pretty traumatic for a
band to have to change its name."

Were any formal challenges ever issued to the
other name-holders?

"Actually," laughs Kelly, "I wanted to get a
hold of one of them and have them come to
our record release party to do a song with us,
because it'd be fun to put them in front of our
fans and then go, 'We want to kick this band's
ass!' But I don't think we would win, because I
saw a picture of them in a magazine and they
just look so gnarly and full on ... what you'd
expect a band called Damnations to look like.
*Nothing* like us."